McMillan's "new" paces (Read 602 times)

This made no sense to me so I just went to McMillian and put in my best recent HM pace to see what it spit back for training paces. I can't remember for sure but they do seem faster than what I've seen in the past. I've always thought the McMillian recommended easy paces were too fast but they seem more so now. I'm not seeing easy paces 20 seconds slower than HM pace (that's crazy talk) but the fastest end of McMillan's Easy range for me is only 10 seconds slower than my marathon PR--that's certainly not easy. The slowest end of the Easy range is about the fastest I ever run on an easy day.

In any case, I can't see adjusting one's easy pace because McMillian running dot com said so. Clearly it's just working off of an algorithm that needs a little tweaking.

Obviously if a website tells you your easy pace should be only 20 seconds per mile slower than your half marathon race pace, something's busted.

I happen to have a white copy of the "old" pace calculations and the "new" paces are indeed quicker on the fast end of the range and the slow end is similar. The "old" range of easy for me was just over a minute slower then HM pace and 40 seconds slower then M pace.

"Old" easy pace = 8:53 to 9:23

"New" easy pace = 8:19 to 9:20

HM pace = 7:57

M pace = 8:22

Honestly I can't imagine running my easy days faster then my estimated M pace. Maybe its time to HTFU? I'm also a HR guy and the "old" easy paces align pretty well with my calculated easy HR zone where as the "new" paces would not.

The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff

The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff

I've recently joined the camp of "easy is whatever I feel is easy that day . . . with a lower bounds of 40sec off MP." After learning that Kenyans do their recovery runs at 9:30-8:30 pace, I don't feel I should be running any faster.

Agreed, which is why I haven't used the new paces much. But when I imput my HM PR (1:49:48) into the calculator, my easy pace range is suppose to be 8:45-9:45. 9:45 feels fairly easy on most days, 8:45 almost never does. But maybe I'm just not trying hard enough...

I'm the same way. My HM PR is really close to yours, but most of my easy runs are around 10 min/mile.

I think 8:45 seems fast for easy pace, considering that it's 6 sec/mile faster than the theoretical marathon pace that the calculator spits out. Maybe for a really short run?

If my legs are feeling fresh, I can end up on the 9:30-9:45 end of things. Tired legs? I'm lucky to pull 10:15s. On the treadmill it's even worse - I almost never run faster than 5.8mph if I want my heart rate to be in a range at all resembling easy, and I have been stuck on the mill a lot this winter so I've been going slooowww. Exactly one time have I ever been out for an easy run and averaged under a 9 minute mile. It was a freak of a run, and it was glorious.

Putting in recent 10 mile times and marathon goal time, the paces come out pretty much as what I'm doing. The marathon goal time I used was that fast pace that you only tell you close friends about, not the middle real goal pace you tell everyone about.

I don't see a huge problem with the paces -- I think much would depend upon what "phase" of training you are in.

In a base phase (where the idea of easy running is most important), I could see finishing my easy runs at MP+10-20s over the last few miles. He gives a pretty wide range of almost a minute. It would be really rare that an easy run would average the fast end of the pace guidelines, but not very unusual to touch on those paces at the end of an easy run on a day when I was feeling good.

I also think that slower runners could and maybe even should be getting down to marathon pace on a regular basis on easy days in the base phase, as their marathon pace will be closer to their easy pace than it would be for faster runners.

Of course, in a time of the year (or a time in your career) where the main emphasis of your training is bigger workouts, you are going to have more recovery days than easy days -- even to the point where easy days might fall out of the picture. Seems like these are the times when people are more tuned into their training and so that may account for at least part of the reason these paces seem odd to many people here.

holy crap they are a LOT faster than they used to be. I put in my marathon PR and I remember when I was running that I was for the first time ever starting to bump the fast end of training paces occasionally and now it is nowhere close. The slow end now would have been my easy pace only on a very very good day.

I'm going to say from memory that they are a full minute per mile faster on easy and long than they used to be.

And this was a phase where I fit the race predictor curve perfectly, I am not slower on the marathon than my other times would predict.

Recovery pace is now what used to be easy pace

Easy is now what used to be no mans land to marathon pace

Steady state is what used to be tempo

Tempo is getting down to the long intervals.

MTA: thanks for pointing this out. I am so far off the curve right now I would never have noticed and might have gotten frustrated. I did very very well following the slowest end of the old McMillian paces and I have to be careful not to push my paces anyway.

I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets

"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7

Of course, in a time of the year (or a time in your career) where the main emphasis of your training is bigger workouts, you are going to have more recovery days than easy days -- even to the point where easy days might fall out of the picture. Seems like these are the times when people are more tuned into their training and so that may account for at least part of the reason these paces seem odd to many people here.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The calculator gives my easy pace as 7:15-8:15, but there are many weeks where I'll only run in that range once or twice. Most of my easy days are probably better described as recovery days, where I'll run as slow as 10:00 if I feel like it. But I'm doing a lot more hard stuff than I have in the past; if I weren't doing any workouts, I'd be comfortable running 7:15-7:30 most days. So, with this in mind, the calculator seems pretty fair.

This is only true if you take the average pace of all your runs as your "actual" pace.

Well...

a.) How else would you do it?

and

b.) I'm not so sure that's true anyway. It would be pretty rare for me to crack 7:15 on an easy run, even at the tail end of an easy run, unless I'm in a recovery/base period (which is like almost never) and not doing any workouts.

The training paces I'm seeing are exactly the same as the ones I printed out last fall. (These are based on a 1:29:00 HM time.)

For example, I'm still getting an easy range of 7:15 to 8:15. That seems reasonable at a 7:09 goal marathon pace, and I can stay pretty comfortable at around 7:40 when I'm on flat ground.

Are the results skewing faster for somewhat slower goal times now? Not sure what changed.

I disagree that your easy pace should be any where near a truly raced marathon pace, a marthon where you didn't bonk and have your pace destroyed by shuffling the last 2 to 6 miles. My last marathon pace was 6:30. On my easy days, I'm normally starting around 8:00s, but may finish around 7:30s, depending how I feel. This is especially true when I run in the mornings, and half asleep. When I run in the evenings, I normally start in the 7:50 range and gradually get a little faster (w/ no additional effort), but rarely go faster than 7:30s if trying to keep the effort easy. I must qualify this by saying it took me a few years, and getting older, to have this discipline. I used to run my easy days way too fast.